The 300SX was publicly demonstrated for the first time at Comdex Fall '94.

The GLINT 300SX was a high performance graphics processor that combined workstation class 3D graphics acceleration and state-of-the-art 2D performance in a single chip.

This was one of the first cards that crossed the line between high end workstations and the PC market.

All the rendering operations of OpenGL are accelerated by the GLINT 300SX, including Gouraud shading, depth buffering, anti-aliasing, alpha blending, and texture mapping with screen resolutions up to 2560x2048. Further specs were :

- 8, 16 or 32-bits per pixel RGBA and 4 or 8-bit color indexed
- 16, 24 or 32-bit Z buffer - 4 or 8-bit stencil buffer
- Double buffering, stereo and overlay support
- PCI-bus Rev 2.0 interface with on-chip DMA
- 112-bit memory interface - 300,000 shaded, depth buffered and anti-aliased polygons/second.

The Imagine128 was first shown at Comdex/Spring '94 in Atlanta, instantly winning many awards, like the "Best of Comdex Award", by Byte Magazine in the peripherals category, and the "Comdex Test Center Highly Recommended Award" by Computer Reseller News.

With subcontracting the fabrication of its Imagine 128 chip designs to LSI Logic Corporation and NEC Corporation, the company avoided the costs of owning and operating dedicated manufacturing facilities, and thus focussing its resources on product design and development, quality assurance, marketing and customer support.

While other manufacturers claimed to have 128-bit graphics, the only true 128-bit graphics card in the world was the Number Nine 128, utilizing 128-bit technology in all three major subsystems - the graphics processor, the internal processor bus and data path to graphics memory.

The Imagine128 processor included an optimized 128-bit memory controller that handled traffic to and from the processor at sustained bandwidths to 500MB/second. The extra-high bandwidth provided ensured that the speed remained nearly constant across all colour modes. As a result, there was no noticeable performance loss when colour depth was increased to 16-bit (65,000 colours), or even 32-bit (16.8 million) true colour. The 4mb version was capable of 60Hz with 65K colours at the maximum resolution of 1600 x 1200. A wide variety of drawing primitives and display functions were supported, such as bit-bit rates of 165 million pixels per second within Windows. The 128 was designed to work especially well with Pentiums and could directly support 8, 16, and 32 bpp display buffers.

Using VRAM instead of DRAM, and only the PCI interface, ignoring the slower ISA and VL-Bus interfaces ; Number Nine targeted this board solely at the High end market, assuming nobody in that market wanted compromises. The future proved that assumption right, even though the board retailed at $999, overall volume in the retail and distribution channels increased more than 280 percent over the course of 1994.

The 128 doubled the bandwidth of the competitor’s 64-bit cards, like the Diamond Stealth. A sneak preview of the Imagine128 board, reviewed in the November `94 issue of PC/Computing, noted that the board was 163 percent faster than typical 64-bit VRAM graphics adapters and 861 percent faster than their 32-bit, baseline graphics adapter when benchmarked on a 66Mhz Pentium computer.

Early 1995 Number Nine announced that its Imagine128 board had broken the 500,000 xStones performance barrier using Accelerated-X, the high-performance UNIX X Window server developed by X Inside Inc. of Denver, CO. Prior to the Imagine128, 64-bit accelerators were only able to achieve 350,000 xStones.

Late 1995, the Imagine128 became the first graphics card ever to break the 30 million WinMarks barrier using WinBench 95. According to Number Nine, the Imagine 128 WinBench 4.0 benchmark ran on a Dell XPS P90 100Mhz, with 16 MB RAM and 256Kb and scored 36.9 million at 1024 x 768 x 16 x 32.


Being designed from the ground up to take advantage of 32-bit operating systems, the release of Windows 95 couldn’t have come at a better time, providing the 128 with the extra bandwidth and functionality to really take advantage of the Imagine128’s architecture .

One review commented on the 128’s 2D speed : To say the Imagine 128 is "snappy" is like saying an Indy 500 race car is "snappy". The 128 is blink of an eye fast.

The Imagine 128 would later be replaced by the Imagine 128 Series II.

No info found on what exact 3D capabilities the card has, sources needed. Most likely the card was only capable of drawing basic 3D primitives.

Trivia : Apparently, the Imagine 128 powers the NASDAQ Wall in Times Square.

The specifications for the Pro are similar to the 4Mb Imagine 128, except that the Pro carried 8Mb of VRAM, enabling the card to reach an ultra high resolution of 1920 x 1080 with 16.8M colours at a maximum refresh rate of 72Hz.

The high end model was sold for $1999, and was therefore aimed at the very high end of the market, for users of graphics- and video-intensive applications such as PC-based colour pre-press, desktop publishing, multimedia, complex imaging and other applications requiring photorealistic true colour.

Whilst not a video card, this is a complete 3DO console on a ISA expansion card,
which allows you to play 3DO games on the PC.

All input (joypads) and output (video) is redirected to PC counterparts. Very rare product, mainly because it never caught on. Most stores only got one unit per store, and never sold them until clearance. Production was stopped immediately. The Unit sold for US $399.95 , and in Europe for around $600. Boxed cards are next to impossible to find, to have everything shrink wrapped and in new condition is extremely rare indeed. As you can see below, the necessary hardware required was most likely a cause of it's market failure as well. Many 3DO Blaster owners agree that setting the system up with all the different cables and general Win 3.1 issues can be quite tricky.

Due to a design choice, the only CD-ROM drive working with the card is the Creative CR-563 CD-ROM drive (a Panasonic model, re-branded by Creative). This was a double-speed drive with recognized reliability, maybe the prime reason for its choice, paired with vendor lock-in.

The software drivers allowed for DOS or Windows (3.1) based gameplay, although Windows based gaming featured real-time stretching of the game window and screenshot capturing. As graphics boards of the time (1994) were not up to par with the system's needs, a pass-through using "VGA feature connector" links was used, thus reserving an area on screen to be used by the 3DO Blaster card's output (on the Windows environment - running under DOS, full-screen was the only option). Thus, there was no impact on the CPU. As with the first 3DO system from Panasonic (Real FZ-1) an FMV daughter-card enabling VideoCD playback was planned, but since the 3DO Blaster failed to achieve momentum, it was never released. Saved games were stored in NVRAM on the card, supposedly not using resources on the PC to prevent hacking.

The low systemrequirements is because the Blaster only uses the PC to overlay the Graphics. Hence offloading all the CPU power to the 3DO board.

System Requirements :

IBM compatible 386-25 Mhz or Above
4 MB RAM
VGA display adapter with feature connector
Microsoft Windows (tm) 3.1
Sound Blaster (tm) series with CD-Audio connector or Compatible
Creative CR-563 CD ROM Drive
Stereo Speakers

The package includes :

3DO Blaster PC Expansion Card
Creative 3DO Control Pad

Games :

Gridders
Shockwave

Software (both incompatible with the 3DO Blaster) :

Aldus Photostyler SE
Aldus Gallery Effects Vol. 1

3DO Blaster Application software on 3.5 Diskettes
3DO Sampler Disc

A very early 3D accelerator based on the Yamaha YGV612 Rendering Polygon Accelerator.

The history of the Tasmania 3D starts in the mid-to-late 1980s, with Western Digital adding the Paradise subsidiary to their Multimedia Products Unit in 1986. Paradise produced some of the best VGA cards of the era. The next evolutionary step for many companies was dedicated 3D acceleration.

On Sept 11, 1995, Western Digital and Yamaha announced that they formed a strategic partnership to develop and market 3D products for the PC.

At the time of announcement, 3D acceleration was considered as the next step in real life graphics for the pc, and with the advent of new 3D APIs, and faster interfaces, a number of companies dared to step into this new realm of PC computing.

The 3D game board would be based on the Yamaha YGV612 3D Rendering Polygon Accelerator, and would be marketed under the Paradise brand name.

In the press release, officials from WD and Yamaha explained why they chose to partner up:

"Three dimensional graphics is the next technology wave in multimedia," explained Leonard Sharp, who was at the time the vice president of marketing for Western Digital's Multimedia Products Unit. "Yamaha's current 3D technology is the right solution at the right time for consumers to realize the excitement of 3D.

“The Yamaha and Western Digital partnership will deliver a new dimension in reality and `twitch response' to PC games that will allow them to rival the best console game machines," said Robert Starr, general manager for sales and marketing for Yamaha Systems Technology Inc. "Our core 3D accelerator expertise combined with Western Digital's board-level knowledge is already attracting OEMs, resellers and game developers."

On Sept 25, 1995, the official announcement came when Western Digital announced its first 3D accelerator, based on the Yamaha YGV612, called the Paradise Tasmania 3D.

The actual Yamaha YGV612 chip was announced Nov 14, 1994, when Yamaha announced two new 3D accelerator chips, the Vram based YGV611 RPA, and a cost reduced, Dram based YGV612 RPA2 that would be released at a later date.

Running at 50Mhz, and produced on a 208-pin QFP package, the YGV612 was one of the first 3D chips to market, and performed polygon rendering, shading, hidden surface removal, texture mapping and Z-buffering. Performance was measured at 300,000 Gouraud-shaded polygons per second and Z-buffering and 150,000 shaded/texture mapped polygons/sec.

The highest resolution supported in 3D was 640 x 480 with 65k colours and supported a maximum of 4Mb Dram.

WD tried to give their first 3D card an edge over the soon to be released competing products by keeping the costs low while still satisfying the consumer’s desire for 3D performance.

At $250, the Tasmania 3D gaming board gave software developers a quick path to porting their 3D games while maintaining compatibility with any VGA board, by using a 9 pin loopback cable, similar to the later released Voodoo Graphics.

The Tasmania controlled the switching from 2D acceleration to 3D acceleration using an on-board analogue MUX. This back-end circuitry takes in the analogue data from the VGA board via a loop-back cable and either routes it directly to the display or switches to the 3D engine.

At the time, 2D graphics cards were still vastly superior to the integrated 2D/3D solutions, so combining 3D acceleration with any 2D board that a consumer already had was a logical move, and also cut down the cost considerably.

The first boards came with a PCI interface, though Western Digital did plan to offer a VL-Bus based board.

The company chose to use the more common polygon rendering approach of the Yamaha chip, rather than employ an alternative rendering technique, such as the curved surfaces (quadratic texture mapping) used in the NV1, produced by their competitor NVidia.

On Sept 27, 1995, only two days after the Tasmania 3D was announced, Western Digital announced that they sold their Multimedia Products Unit to Phillips, which re-established the Paradise name. The sale was finalised on October 31, 1995. The Paradise brand was then owned by the Multimedia PC Group of Philips Semiconductors, which was a Philips Electronics company.

The board began shipping in the same month, but was expected to be widely available in October.

With the upcoming arrival of Direct3D in Windows 95, Yamaha announced support for the new API already back in April, 1995, and subsequently Phillips confirmed that announcement once again with their Tasmania card on April 10, 1996.

The card supported games written for DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 and was backed up by the major API's at the time, namely RenderWare, BRender and RenderMorphics.

Shipping with Tasmania 3D were two popular PC games: FX Fighter by GT Entertainment, and Domark ‘s Tank Commander . In addition, for a limited time, Tasmania 3D customers could register with Philips to receive three more games from Mindscape: SU-27 Flanker, CyberSpeed and Air Power.

The card was discontinued August 1996, and Direct3D drivers were never released. (More sources needed on D3D drivers and date discontinued)

This card is the one reviewed by Dimension 3D, August 1, 1996 by Biff Stephens and Tommy McClain. 

Matrox Impression, an add-on card that worked in conjunction with a Millennium card to provide 3D acceleration.

The Impression was aimed primarily at the CAD market, with DynaView 2D and 3D Drivers for AutoCAD and Microstation. It failed to make much of an impression on the rapidly emerging 3D gaming market, especially since the still very important DOS performance was poor.

The Impression could not perform hardware texture mapping, requiring Gouraud shading or lower-quality techniques.

Very few games took advantage of the 3D capabilities of Impression Plus, with the only known games being the three titles that were bundled with the card in it's '3D Superpack' CD bundle: 3D fighting game, Sento by 47 Tek; 3D space combat game, IceHawk by Amorphous Designs, and Specter MGA (aka Specter VR) by Velocity.


Atleast one of them (Sento)(more sources needed) was based on the Renderware API, which 47-Tek used instead of writing directly to the Matrox. Sento was a street fighter like game with characters made up of as many as 1000 Gourad shaded polygons and ran at 640x480 with 65k colours.

Apart from games, the CD contained 3D images, and demonstrations.

The board itself was available in PCI, VL and AT Bus versions, and like previous Matrox boards came with a number of expansion boards, including a 2Mb memory upgrade module, a VideoLogic PowerPlay64 add-on module for smooth, video playback at 1280 x 1024 at 30fps, and an announced (released?) MGA Video XL Upgrade Module.

The graphics card featured a 64-bit graphics engine delivering 40 million Winmarks, and had a 175 MHz DAC or optional 220 MHz DAC, and the 4mb board was capable of 1600 x 1200 with 256 and 65k colours.

3D Performance included 150,000 Gouraud shaded polygons per second, accelerated double buffering, lightsourcing, hidden surface removal (HSR), z-buffering and double-buffering in 24bit and 16-bit colors, and support for the following 3D API's : 3DR, OpenGL, HOOP's and VAGI.

Matrox's "Millennium" line of video cards were noted for their exceptional 2D speed and visual quality. They had a wide following among users willing to pay for a higher quality and sharper display.

The first Millennium boards, based on the IS-STORM chip did not have any form of 3D acceleration. A later version of the Millennium (MGA-2064W) was capable of 3D acceleration, and was faster then the Matrox Impression Plus, including features similar to the Impression.

Without support for texturing, the cards were very limited in visual enhancement capability. The Millennium received slightly more game support, but primarily only in bundled titles such as NASCAR Racing that only received slight performance improvements with little quality gain.

Like the Impression Plus, the Millennium had a number of upgrade modules as well.